Improving the sustainability of manufacturing systems through green lean manufacturing.

In the current worldwide scenario, manufacturers are urged to improve their sustainability performance, in terms of keeping the balance among economic, environmental and social performances. Nevertheless, top managers and company leaders tend to complain that it is not possible to become greener without large investments. In particular, they argue that green practices require expensive technology, the environmental regulations are strict and the compliance cost is high. In recent years, the well-known lean manufacturing approach, mainly focused in waste reduction, has become to be viewed with a renewed interest towards improving not only economic but also environmental and social aspects. Although promising results have been published in the literature showing that lean practices can lead to some environmental and social improvements, most of the researchers in the field agree that lean manufacturing has not obtained the maturity level required to ensure sustainability yet. In this context, the idea of combining both lean and green manufacturing has arised. Unfortunately, while there is no doubt that lean manufacturing increases productivity, efficiency, quality and costumers’ satisfaction by reducing wastes, there is a lack of research about the benefits of lean practices in relation to green ones. On one hand, there are researchers that argue that the lean continuous improvement culture favours the development of green strategies. On the other hand, there are the ones that argue that green objectives are in conflict with lean ones, since lean practices are mainly focus on adding value resources, whereas green practices can limit production, design and services for the sake of taking care of environmental issues. In this conflicting context, there is a lack of lean-green strategies in the literature as well as little to no evidence of successful implementation cases. In this thesis, the gap between applying lean and green practices is studied, evaluating the actual possibility of combining them towards providing strategical solutions for the sake of sustainability, in terms of economic, environmental and social performances. Results obtained from three extensive literature reviews regarding the current trends in lean, green and lean-green manufacturing show that although lean and green practices do differ in their main objectives, they can efficiently be implemented together since they have the same structure and they are synergetic, in the sense that they can enhance each others’ strengths and mitigate each others’ weaknesses. Based on the literature reviews’ findings a novel theoretical manufacturing framework capable of combining the lean and green approaches within a synergetic environment is developed in this thesis. In order to test the proposed framework within the real manufacturing scenario, a survey is conducted in different Saudi manufacturing companies. The results of this survey show that Saudi employees are becoming aware of the several business opportunities that lean and green practices can lead. In particular, the quantitative results have shown that Saudi employees expect lean and green practices to improve the operational and environmental performances of the companies. Moreover, they also show that Saudi employees agree that the combination of lean and green practices can lead to further improvements in the sustainability performance. Nevertheless, the qualitative results show that, in order to achieve these benefits, Saudi companies are urged to develop effective systems at individual, institutional and community levels capable of creating a suitable framework for implementing the required cultural and structural changes. On one hand, institutional change involves changing rules and norms in the organisations, while individual change involves employee training and motivation. On the other hand, both employees and institutions should be the main actors influencing the broader social change, regulating the impact on the communities’ sustainability and how this impact can return in terms of social investment works towards increasing the companies’ profit. In this context, Saudi employees suggest that companies should reduce the number (and complexity) of the currently used manufacturing processes; simplify the productive and administrative procedures making them more efficient; promote educational programs for employees, in terms of preparing them for the change and training them towards adopting innovative manufacturing techniques; and improve employees’ working conditions, in terms of safety, health and salary, so that they can be more engaged and willing to learn new strategies and implement them. Finally, Saudi employees highlight that none of this can be actually be achieved without a stronger leadership, a higher top management and stakeholder involvement, and a more supportive government.